That's a decent $1K discount from $9K to ~$8K for MX (90 lbs)...; currently 900GTO (70 lbs)... is at $8,750 which makes MX quite competitive and attractive offering. PC requirement is not a huge impediment if pricing incentives were to remain persistent. I feel premium mounts are over-priced to begin with; hope Astro-Physics and others will follow suit. Thx

Don't forget the MX comes with weights. I think also a saddle. Those are extra cost items with AP.

The problem isn't so much the PC - most people use PCs to image - but setting up the pointing model. Its not a "slap it down turn it on and observe" kind of user experience.

I have an MX and using tpoint to set up a pointing model was really not difficult to do.It wasnt any harder than drift aligning my cgem.

It took me an hopur to set up a 180 point model with 7arcsec pointing accuracy.Gathering the stars is automatic-I just sat and watched my set up slew around the sky for an hour and then I pressed the supermodel button and had a pretty accurate pointing model.If you have a permanent set up you only have to do the tpoint run once.

Polar alignment was easy too.tpoint calculates the error after you have 30-40 stars and the software tells you exactly how to adjust the mount.

The problem isn't so much the PC - most people use PCs to image - but setting up the pointing model. Its not a "slap it down turn it on and observe" kind of user experience.

You don't have to create a pointing model if you don't want to. The MX is very much a slap it down and turn it on. I do it all the time. Should one choose to build a model, the process is automated, quick and painless.

frolin, good to know. however even if you slap it down and turn it on, you still need the PC, right? no option for completely dumb operation.

If it works anything like the ME this is simply not true if you don't need GOTO. I use our permanently mounted ME all the time without turning on a computer. Just like using a push-to mount but with a joystick.

When you consider its 90lbs of imaging gear capacity, I don't know that SB had its main function to be a portable mount to take to any place you wish. It's really meant to be in an obs or at least somewhere that has electricity to run everything.

I wouldn't consider the MX if I was looking for portability. There's other mounts that do that very well. But with what you get in the package, this is a mount that you can set up in an obs with what comes in the box, stick your imaging gear on it, let T-point do its thing and you're ready to make some nice images. Counterweights and saddle come as standard fare as does the SkyX.

I like Paramount mounts; my problem has been using devices like iPad/SkySafari Pro... which are a breeze to use with Astro-physics mounts while it becomes a daisy chain kind of affair with MX/ME; SkySafari Pro going through TheSkyX I mean to control MX/ME.

FYI: I never got iPad/SkySafari Pro/SkyWire... going for ME and finally gave up being frustrated [I use it all the time with elCapitan for navigation, pointing, aligning, framing, etc.]; more details of the ordeal here.... Thx

We need some price wars to bring these inflated 'high-end-mount' prices down to earth.

Yeah, we need them to be like all the others with little or no support, questionable or unreliable operations which need all sorts of tuning tweaks and off-brand updates to work properly, intermittent failures, no support except to the original buyer and that only for a very short period of time, support and repairs consisting of "it works just the way we designed it" and if you want it fixed "buy our new mount".

No thanks. I'll take an (in order of personal preference) AP, Bisque, or Tak mount any time.

not if you're using an SG-4 or similar... i'm thinking of the SG-4 + DSLR combination for hassle-free imaging.

Maybe if you've got a standalone guider, which not many people do. OTHERWISE, you won't be guiding even ST4 style without a computer. You will have PHD, or Maxim, or CCDsoft running on a PC to allow you to guide. Some of the standalone autoguiders can work, but not a cotton picking one of them works as well as good old PHD and a computer. The computer is something of a red herring in my mind, anyway. A netbook is actually more portable and easier to use than some dadgum standalone autoguider.